The unfolding disaster has dramatically reduced support for offshore drilling among Democrats and independents. It dropped by 13 percent since February. Yet, over the same time period, Republican support for drilling has remained strong (76 percent in May, compared with 74 percent in February). Overall, 54 percent of Americans still support more offshore drilling, but that’s significantly less than the 63 percent that approved of it in February. There is now a large and growing divergence between Republicans and other Americans.

We still don’t know what caused the blowout and explosion, but the Wall Street Journal is running a story suggesting the cause may have been related to the process Halliburton used for sealing the holes and gaps created during the drilling process.